Gilgamesh — once more

4 The Search for Everlasting Life

(…)

There was the garden of the gods; all round him stood bushes bearing gems. Seeing it he went down at once, for there was fruit of carnelian with the vine hanging from it, beautiful to look at; lapis lazuli leaves hung thick with fruit, sweet to see. For thorns and thistles there were haematite and rare stones, agate, and pearls from out of rhe sea. While Gilgamesh walked in the garden by the edge of the sea Shamash saw him, and he saw that he was dressed in the skins of animals and ate their flesh. He was distressed, and he spoke and said, ‘No mortal man has gone this way, before, nor will, as lon as the winds drive over the sea.’ And to Gilgamesh he said, ‘You will never find the life for which you searching.’ Gilgamesh said to glorious Shamash, ‘Now that I have toiled and strayed so far over the wilderness,mam I to sleep, and let the earth cover my head forever? Let my eyes see the sun untill they are dazzled with looking. Although I am no better than a dead man, still let me see the light of the sun.’

(…)

(Penguin Classics, 1976)

Yes, I keep coming back to this wonderful poem, asking myself how it would be like to read it in its original version. Gilgamesh is immeasurably older rhan f.i. Homer’s Iliad. There’s good evidence that most of the Gilgamesh poems were already written down in the first centuries of the second millenium. B.C., and that they probably existed in much the same form many centuries earlier. The most final and complete edition of this Assyrian Epic comes from the 7th century B.C. library of Assurbanipal, antiquary and last great king of the Assyrian Empire.

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